Sophocles Tragedies

There was once a time and a place where the greatest playwrightters in the world existed. That time was ancient Athens. One of the most notable playwrightsters was Sophocles. Sophocles was born in 496 B.C.E and was born into a relatively rich family. This paper will tell about his day-to-day life, how he changed the world and his typical play. Sophocles was an amazing play writer and maybe the greatest theater artist to this day.

Sophocles was born into a rich family in 496 B.C.E. He always felt a strong calling to the arts and. He was especially talented at music. Sophocles was very religious belonging to the Cult of Halon. When he was 16 he was chosen to lead a prayer to the gods declaring their navy's victory over the Persians. The little information about his early live shows that he was an upstanding member of the community, participated in his community and had an extreme talent at art. He became a treasurer in 442 and as such. hHe was in charge of managing their tribute money from the other city-states in the Delian league. In 440 he was elected a strat?goi. As a strat?goi Sophocles’s job was to command the army and create strategies. In 448 Sophocles was elected a proboulos along with 10 other people to organize the Athenians financials after being defeated in Sicily. This was especially impressive because he was 83 at the time. Sophocles’s last recorded show was a chorus in 406 mourning his diseased rival Euripides. Sophocles died that same year to natural causes at the age of 90.

Sophocles also changed the modern and ancient word in many ways. Modern playwrightsters credit Sophocles with many of the innovations they use now. He invented the scene paintings for the backgrounds. This is important because he would use this to make the people feel like they were actually in the play which made them enjoy them more. He also increased the chorus size from 12 to 15 members. This made it so they could blend the music better and have more people from all over the voice spectrum. But maybe his most important achievement of all was introducing a third actor into plays. Before this, it was common for there to only be 2 actors and for them to split the roles they played, but now they could split the parts, with their lines being easier to remember and the play being able to have more than two people per scene.! He also won 24many awards for the plays he produced. He had 24 victories in these competitions. This was a supereriorwhopping amount compared to his rivals, Aeschylus who had 13 wins and Euripides who only had 4. Scholars say he may have never gotten worse than second place. This was amazing considering how many contests he entered.

Sophocles was part of a famous trifecta of playwriters including, Aeschylus (who was older than him), and Euripides (Who was younger than him). These three developed tragedies as a whole. A typical Tragedy was based on a myth and was religious. Therefore, they could not have any political statements in them. There could also not be any violence on stage so all of the deaths were off stage and only indicated by sound. Only seven of Sophocles full plays survived aging but also including 400 lines of a play about a satyr. The only plays we know exactly when they were made were Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus. His full list of known plays was: Ajax, Antigone, Trachinian woman, Oedipus the King, Electra, Philoctetes, Oedipus at Colonus, and Trackers with Philoctetes being considered his earliest one and it has been speculated that Oedipus at Colonus was written by his grandson after his death.

In conclusion, Sophocles was an amazing playwriter and maybe the greatest playwriter to this day. He had a very interesting life, He changed the world entirely and he wrote amazing plays. It just makes you wonder if you would have been an exquisite play writer back then. 

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